Dérive App is created as a simple but engaging platform that allows users to explore their urban spaces in a care-free and casual way. It takes the ideals of the situationists and merges it with digital means in order to create a tool that would imply an exploration of urban space in a random unplanned way as a game. Too often in urban centers we are controlled by our day to day activities thus closing off urban experiences that exist around us. Dérive app was created to try to nudge people who are in this repetitive cycle to allow the suggestions and subjectivities of others to enter into their urban existences.

Full Description

Dérive app is a mobile web application that is capable of running on all modern mobile phones. The application allows users to select various decks of 'task cards' that will be dealt to them randomly once the dérive has begun. These decks have different themes, come from different sources and users, some are localised for specific cities and others are experimental. During the walk a random 'task card' is dealt, such as "follow a couple" this random task drives an urban experience that is modified by the instruction.
During the dérive the application keeps track of the location of the user, as well as each card that is drawn. The user at the end of the dérive is able to track how the tasks that were dealt changed the course of their journey.
Dérives can be shared with friends, tagged with flicker photos that appear in-line with each task card.

Artist Statement

The active engagement of communities in their urban spaces unleashes in them new understanding of their urban surroundings, to open up channels of dialogue between individuals and groups through a device that makes the unpacking of urban space part of a game. The task cards that are dealt are created with the intention of heightening the experience of the city for the user, by calling them out to search for specific architectural, urban or social points of interest, thus allowing users of the application to see their urban spaces in a different light.